“I didn’t even know phones came with alarms,” the man said.
January 13, 2012
"Actually, Patron X said he had no idea he was the culprit."
"He said his company replaced his BlackBerry with an iPhone the day before the concert. He said he made sure to turn it off before the concert, not realizing that the alarm clock had accidentally been set and would sound even if the phone was in silent mode."
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I heard something like "conductor halts concert when phone alarm sounds" on the news, and I had 2 thoughts:
1. What a whiny baby asshole that conductor is.
2. The poor phone owner. That could happen to anyone.
That is alarming.
I still think such live phone culprits need to be taken out and shot.
They can turn the damn phone off! Using silent mode is not an excuse.
tradguy, the man DID turn the phone off. It wasn't the phone ringing; it was the alarm clock function and it sounds even if the phone is turned off.
This would have been an excellent time for someone to have used his sense of humor. That someone should have been the conductor.
To quote an Althouse commenter to one of my first ever comments here years ago:
OMG
That's horrible. Moreso for the patron than anyone else.
Such events are the reasoning behind my always using soft, unobtrusive ringtones.
He said he himself was often irked by coughs, badly timed applause — and cellphone rings. “Then God, there was I. Holy smokes,” he said."
Perhaps it's best not to be too haughty. Shit happens, even to decent people.
No, it couldn't happen to "anyone," it happens to self-important blowhards who don't care about the other people who also paid money for the show and don't want to hear his toy go off.
It's nice that he apologized, nice that he feels bad. But which is it--did he turn off the phone? or was it in silent mode? A fairly important inconsistency in his story.
Next time, I imagine he'll turn it off. But at some point, we'll all have to check our phones at the door and it is the fault of people like Patron X.
Was at a concert in which the oboe had a solo at the beginning of the piece. The music began and the oboe began its solo...but his reed was cracked and he couldn't get a good tone. Not even close. The conductor stopped the concert, turned to the audience and said, "So, a man walks into a bar--" Brought the house down.
You'd be surprised at what even snobby symphony patrons will forgive if humor is employed.
Too bad the alarm wasn't set to HTC's "Soft Chime #2," as that might have complemented the piece rather well.
Hello! Read the article. The guy said his phone was off and the alarm sounded anyway. I don't have an iPhone so I can't verify that it works that way. Makes sense to me, though.
That is news to me that an audible alarm sets itself and cannot, in any event, be silenced when the Smart Phone that contains it has been turned off.
But thanks for the warning.
People, even those who are not self important blowhards make mistakes. It's a shame, be it's hardly the end of the world.
Right at the end of Mahler's 9th!
The worst is the feedback screech that comes from some concertgoers' hearing aids!! They can't hear it but everyone else can hear this very quiet but very high pitched whine that seems to come from the music but does not. With time and enormous irritation the source can be pinpointed but there is nothing to be done.
The guy said his phone was off and the alarm sounded anyway.
He didn't fully turn it off, he only silenced it. I just ran a test on my iPhone - set the alarm and fully turned it off. It did not do anything until I turned it back on.
I suspect, going forward, he'll fully turn it off.
It's a shame, be it's hardly the end of the world.
A shame?? Heck, I'd give anything to have been at that concert. Makes for a much better evening and a fabulous story to tell.
But the real outrage happened after the phone was silenced, when the entire male contingent of the New York Philharmonic Symphony collectively urinated on Patron X.
I imagine he put it in silent and then put it in sleep mode. He doesn't sound like the type who would realize that it's not really "off" then. So he said "I turned it off", but it wasn't actually off. The phone will not turn itself on with the alarm if it's actually off, but it indeed will play the alarm if it's on silent and "asleep".
I read elsewhere that the ringing went on for several minutes. Once he figured out that it was his phone, if he couldn't figure out how to silence it, he should have walked out.
Maybe we can work "and at the symphony" into the federal ban on cell phones in cars. And maybe issue Tasers to the ushers.
#FirstWorldProblems
Once he figured out that it was his phone, if he couldn't figure out how to silence it, he should have walked out.
From the article:
"But as Mr. Gilbert was glaring in his direction, he fiddled with the phone as others around him did, just to be sure, pressing buttons. That was when the sound stopped. It was only in the car going home that his wife checked the settings on his phone and found that the alarm had been set."
It's like some web sites where you subscribe and they very cleverly hide the info regarding cancellation.
Totally off topic (Which is... what? People who don't know about all the functions embedded in their phone menus? i.e. 99.9% of smartphone users) but I wanted to share this amusing clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart H/T Glen Reynolds
This is what one misses by not owning a TV.
Before that, the disruption became the marimba ring tone heard round the world, prompting feverish commentary on blogs and comment forums about performance interruptions.
Oh, the self-importance of New York goings on.
But the real outrage happened after the phone was silenced, when the entire male contingent of the New York Philharmonic Symphony collectively urinated on Patron X.
I think I saw a chick squatting.
Metaphorically.
Back in the day, you could take the phone off the hook and it would ring anyway! And the caller would be a zombie! And the zombie would be playing viola and would leap from the stage and eat your brain!
Those were the day.
Why replace a perfectly good and functional Blackberry with an iPhone? His company must have money to burn.
Etwas täppisch und sehr derb.
I kind of sympathize, though. Nowadays it's tough to get your machines to do as they're told instead of substituting their own notions of what you want done. Anyone who's tried to format a MS Word document knows what I'm talking about.
It couldn't happen to a more pretentious composer.
I can forgive the errant phone going off now and then (everyone forgets something now and then) way before I can forgive the jackass adults applauding between movements (ignorant boorishness is preventable, ALWAYS). Unless I'm at a performance for children, there's no excuse, and it's happening with alarmingly increasing frequency. Sorry, I know it makes me a snotty asshole, but I can't help being angry at those philistines.
rhhardin wrote:
It couldn't happen to a more pretentious composer.
Mahler pretentious? What exactly was Mahler's pretense? Or is somebody pretending to be a music critic?
This why I currently despise live classical music. It's music, FFS, not a @#$% religion. It's tiresome (even for Tarzan) to watch a bunch of supposed grownups pretending to savor and hang on each and every note, while secretly checking their watches and thinking about the game they're missing.
It should be like early shakespearian theatre, with lot's of catcalls when mistakes are made, or like jazz with hoot, whoops and "YEAH!"s when things go well.
Sorry, I know it makes me a snotty asshole, but I can't help being angry at those philistines.
A self-aware snotty arsehole is certainly a cut above all the rest!
wv czatest - A soviet-era Russian television game show featuring a red-nosed and endearingly drunk host and a panel of zany apparatchiks.
Quaester Thank you for that link. It seriously made my day. The irony bit was too much. I am still thinking she had to have been in on the bit. Thank you.
Sigh. I just set the alarm on my iPhone, flipped the switch to put it in silent mode and waited. It just vibrated when the alarm time came.
Clearly the phone at the concert was not in silent mode (physical switch on side of iphone next to the volume) nor was it turned off.
Trazan wrote:
This why I currently despise live classical music. It's music, FFS, not a @#$% religion.
Personally, I get a much more religious experience from classical music (and opera) than from @#$% religion, live performance especially. (With me in the hall, that is)
No sound system I've ever heard can produce the sensations I've experienced in a good concert hall, like Avery Fisher Hall and the Met -- sensations one feels on the chest, on the face, in the soles of one's feet. Even in the back teeth! When the Queen of the Night puts her tessitura right on your cheek like a kiss... whoa. Nothing compares.
I'd be pissed if some dude's iPhone 4s chirped at that moment.
Jobs is gone, but his trials remain.
wv medleri: The phone is muted, but the medleri lingers on.
"Sigh. I just set the alarm on my iPhone, flipped the switch to put it in silent mode and waited. It just vibrated when the alarm time came.
Clearly the phone at the concert was not in silent mode (physical switch on side of iphone next to the volume) nor was it turned off."
The alarm on my iPhone goes off even when the ringer is put on silent mode.
Patrick wrote:
I am still thinking she had to have been in on the bit.
I doubt it. Read anything by Froma Harrop, I challenge anyone to discover the least scintilla of humor.
wv: persive - I fail to persive the humor in Ms. Harrop's scribbles.
Terry Southern The Gourmet
That is news to me that an audible alarm sets itself and cannot, in any event, be silenced when the Smart Phone that contains it has been turned off.
Obviously the alarm didn't set itself, but I doubt that guy deliberately set an alarm for the middle of a concert. He probably butt-dialed the alarm settings and hadn't noticed.
radar, my iPhone is always in silent mode and the alarm sounds in the morning. Perhaps you're using an older version of iOS?
One problem was his choice of program. If it was a Beethoven or Wagner program, nobody would have heard it.
Fine, call me a snob, but if I've paid $120 or so for a ticket to see some of the most talented musicians in the history of mankind, I'd like you to not leave your phone ringing for half the performance. Being irate is completely reasonable.
Some people think it's snobbery because fans of real music realize that a phone actually detracts from good music, whereas a fire alarm might notably improve a Lady Gaga "concert."
I wonder if his microwave clock is blinking 12 O'clock?
Tarzan: we are all snotty assholes, in our own way. Only some of us know it.
P.S. - My way of being a snotty asshole is the best.
Ann said...
"Sigh. I just set the alarm on my iPhone, flipped the switch to put it in silent mode and waited. It just vibrated when the alarm time came.
Clearly the phone at the concert was not in silent mode (physical switch on side of iphone next to the volume) nor was it turned off."
The alarm on my iPhone goes off even when the ringer is put on silent mode.
----------------
I've just tested it on my Iphone --no ring in silent mode.
The concert goers are going to sue Apple.
There are almost certainly settings for silent mode. I'd imagine that those settings determine whether the phone's alarm sounds or not when silent mode is engaged. Having just received his phone and being unaware of the alarm, he almost certainly hadn't personalized those settings before the concert.
From the article:
"But as Mr. Gilbert was glaring in his direction, he fiddled with the phone as others around him did, just to be sure, pressing buttons. That was when the sound stopped. It was only in the car going home that his wife checked the settings on his phone and found that the alarm had been set."
I read the article, Freeman, and several others, and the problem is that he let the phone ring for several minutes before doing anything about it, and then he sat there and "fiddled with it" while it kept ringing.
I'm sorry, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it's YOUR PHONE that's ringing, and if you can't figure out how to stop it, you don't sit there and fiddle with it. You walk out and fiddle with it in the lobby so as to try to minimize the interruption you've caused.
I'm sure the guy was mortified by the ringing, but that doesn't change the fact that it was incredibly rude just to sit there and let the problem continue, hoping that the phone would stop ringing before people figured out whose phone it was, rather than walking out.
And Patron X is going to make a 4-figure donation to the Philharmonic.
"Patron X" sounds more like a new, overpriced tequila than a concertgoer.
Also: People with manners are always accused of snobbery by people who have none. The OWS crowd probably thinks people who behave in a civilized manner are snobs.
On the other hand, a cough is a split-second long and basically involuntary (people having a hacking fit should step outside). I'm also not a stickler about clapping between movements. It doesn't interfere with the actual performance.
I was at a Hilary Hahn recital recently, and the crowd was properly silent between the 1st and 2nd movements of a Bach sonata, but the fugue was so spectacular that parts of the audience couldn't contain themselves and applauded. That's totally appropriate.
fivewheels wrote:
[F]ans of real music realize that a phone actually detracts from good music, whereas a fire alarm might notably improve a Lady Gaga "concert."
That suggests an interesting experiment in the Guy Grand mode: Set fire to a concert hall hosting Lady Gaga to see how many patrons are burned to death because they can't distinguish the fire alarm from the performance.
Sorry, clapping between movements absolutely interferes. Can't contain yourself? Stay at home. You clap between movements at a live performance of Symphonie Fantastique that I'm attending, and I will politely wait until the symphony has concluded, walk up to you, and punch your lights out.
That's when I'm a philistine.*
*Please see snotty asshole acknowledgement above.
It's guaranteed that there were out of town audience members for whom a NY Phil concert was an expensive undertaking and a very big deal.
I am one of those every few years, and it would have annoyed the hell out of me.
I'm glad the conductor stopped the music until the problem was resolved.
I hope he restarted at the beginning of the movement for the sake of contnuity.
Internet Tough Guys — an endless source of amusement.
The live concert is an antiquated relic from the 19th century. Serious music lovers prefer recordings.
It was a little later in the show, after Patron X interfered with the conductor as he attempted to catch a foul pop fly ball, that security had to escort him from the hall for his own safety.
The guy said: "I didn’t even know phones came with alarms.”
Actually, it's probably lucky it wasn't set on vibrate. Who knows what sounds might have risen from the pit.
"The live concert is an antiquated relic..."
Insane. If you live down the street from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and you don't go, you're not living your life properly.
Not to mention: That Hilary Hahn recital, for instance, featured music that she not only has not recorded, she was playing new compositions that had never been performed before. How else are you going to hear that? It was wonderful.
What is the point of apologizing anonymously?
I can place myself at each point in the story, from Patron X's embarrassment, to the conductor's rage, the audience's bemusement or anger, the reader's disinterest, the music-lover's horror, the egalitarian's smile, and the iPhone user's curiosity.
It has caused my head to hurt a little.
The live concert is for people who enjoy the social conventions that have accrued around the consumption of high-end music.
I am not interested in participating in those social rituals. I am interested in hearing competent artists deliver their best interpretations of good music, with the best sound quality possible. This is generally not achieved in front of a wheezing, slavering crowd in one take while wearing uncomfortable clothing.
Recording is the purest way to experience music. It rids the artists of the hindrances of being performing seals at a circus and allows them to give exactly the performance they want to give, by allowing total control over the recording environment, and allowing them to record multiple takes and choose the ones that best match their vision.
There is no real reason to suffer through the indignities and absurdities of a concert hall since the advent of good recording technologies.
Palladian. So said Glenn Gould who vanished into his studio at Inn on the Park. I hear him humming in the Goldbergs something you would miss in a concert hall.
the newer iphones sound their alarms even if they are in silent mode.
Michael, can you tell I'm a Gould admirer?
Actually, I like hearing chamber music played live, if it's in an intimate environment, as it was written to be.
The repertoire that arose to suit the large concert halls generally doesn't interest me at all.
"I'm sorry, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it's YOUR PHONE that's ringing,...."
I just got a company blackberry and missed a call today. I heard it ringing, it was in my pocket but I thought it was a phone at the desk behind me. So yeah, its very much possible. This appears to be a older gentleman and its entirely possible his hearing (like mine) has degraded enough that its touch to tell a direction a sound is coming from.
Off with his Marimba!!!
Going to the live Symphony is one of the few vices I still enjoy.
I have gotten discouraged by Braves Baseball and Falcons Football, and I never really liked NBA regular season Hawks games.
I think the big difference is experiencing the audience you are rubbing shoulders with...Ok that is snobby. But that is a hard experience to duplicate anymore outside of maybe The Stratford Festival plays where the Canadians can make you feel plebian.
Gatherings of alert and educated minds has a different feel to it. This may expose my love of French, German and Italian culture. But they are big time Traditionalists.
When I glanced at the screen I first thought I saw "Proton X" and I assumed this was about a rap artiste.
So Mr. Palladian, you eschew sports and big, boomie, Romantic works.
Where's the fun?
It would have been even funnier if someone let out a loud, cheek-rattling fart right in the middle of the concert. That would have driven the douche bag conductor mucking fental with rage.
Peter
"So Mr. Palladian, you eschew sports and big, boomie, Romantic works.
Where's the fun?"
Booze and frequent sex.
I feel for the guy and wouldn't wish his fate on anyone.
That said, this seems like a situation in which penance might be applied, namely:
"OK Mr. I'm Super Sorry, please solve this problem for us."
Because the other folks are right to be infuriated.
How about this solution:
If you wish to bring a cell phone, blackberry or similar device into the hall, you can do one of two things:
(1) Have a employee check your phone to be sure it's off or on silent; or
(2) Take your chances, and if your device goes off, $500 will be charged to your credit card.
Yes, Fr Scott has it. A remedy needs to be available.
The baliffs at the courthouse announce over and over that all phones must be turned OFF, and when the Judge waltzes in says that he will confiscate and keep any ringing phones.
So far he has never done that while I watched...the threat worked.
Sorry, I meant Fr Fox.
Well its a good thing he didn't have a seizure; that would have really ruined the concertgoers experience!
I love Pat's response (#FirstWorldProblems). Anyway, my iPhone 4 on the penultimate version of iOS does play the alarm with the switch set to silent; it does not if I turn it off. I've never heard of an iPhone that was switched off turning itself on in order to play an alarm tone; think about what that would involve! The phone would have to have an internal clock that runs even when the phone is turned off, and the alarm function would somehow have to inform the clock to turn the phone on at a variable time. Why would Apple go to the considerable time and expense of developing such a feature?
Revenant said...
"Obviously the alarm didn't set itself, but I doubt that guy deliberately set an alarm for the middle of a concert. He probably butt-dialed the alarm settings and hadn't noticed."
Obviously the alarm didn't set itself, but unless his butt pushed the round button, slid and held the unlock slider, tapped "utilities", then "alarm," then "+" or "edit," and then accidentally set a spectacularly inappropriate time on three independent rollers, and then tapped "save," he set the alarm.
People say "it could happen to anyone," but it can't. It only happens to people who leave their cell phones on in plainly inappropriate settings. This guy has only himself to blame; he knows the difference between silent and off, but he figures that silent is good enough. I wish I could say this would teach the audience a lesson, but the reality is that it won't even teach this guy his lesson.
Fr Martin Fox said...
"I feel for the guy and wouldn't wish his fate on anyone.
Father, you must surely have had the experience. Every Catholic's had the experience: "hoc est enim corpus meum, quod pro—"DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEEEEEEE! DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEEEEEEE! DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEE DEE DEE DEE; DEEEEEEE! Every Sunday, and weekdays when we have one, the Cantor says before Mass "take out your cell phones and turn them off." And every Sunday, and not a few weekdays, someone apparently took the cantor to say "everyone who isn't important, turn off your cell phone—don't worry, Bill, I'm not talking to you."
It happened one Sunday soon after we got a new priest, and he stops and says "that had better be Jesus calling." I thought to myself "I'm going to like this guy!"
I'll tell you the worst story that I have. I'm at a daily Mass, there are maybe a dozen people there, and a guy's cell phone rings. And he takes the call! He gets up and kind of half-bows in the general direction of the tabernacle, and audibly says "yello" as he's leaving. The special hell.
"How about this solution: If you wish to bring a cell phone, blackberry or similar device into the hall, you can do one of two things: (1) Have a employee check your phone to be sure it's off or on silent; or (2) Take your chances, and if your device goes off, $500 will be charged to your credit card."
How about this for a solution: "File your credit card with the front desk, and if your cell phone goes off, congratulations, you just bought the ticket of every person in the auditorium."
Oh, and there's another problem with the butt dialing theory. Let's assume that he has a magic butt that's capable of doing all those things! Unless the guy had his iPhone in his underwear, even his surprisingly dexterous butt couldn't have set the alarm because the iPhone touchscreen only responds to flesh. Try it for yourself. Try to slide the unlock slider or tap a button while wearing gloves, or pull your sleeve up over your hand and try to do the same. Doesn't work. So either he set it, or someone else set it, or he has a magically dexterous ass and a habit of putting his phone in his underwear.
Simon, I can confirm that the iPhone 4S touchscreen does respond to my fingers when wearing my Sermoneta unlined smooth-leather gloves.
Maybe "Patron X" was wearing leather pants and squirmed in just the right way...
A friend of mine married an Australian sheila twenty-some odd years ago, moved to Perth and started a marimba band. The catchiest tune on his first album was My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. It would make an excellent ring tone and fit right in at the symphony.
www.youtube.com.sg/watch?v=GQbO2GlAQcg
Palladian, interesting--is that an upgrade or downgrade d'you think? It's kind of inconvenient to have to take one's gloves off, but there are obvious benefits to "flesh only"--no butt dialing, for instance.
I like the look of the 4s but I don't see anything that just insists on an upgrade.
I don't think that any of the previous commenters have mentioned that since 2003, any use of a cellphone during a concert or other public performance has been illegal and punishable by a $50 fine.
Phones are now too complicated for even me. I'm pretty sure I've not actually turned my phone off on take off even though it looked off to me.
Now I know how to turn it off though.
He made a mistake, brought about by new technology.
He freely admitted his error. He apologized to the conductor. He apologized to the other patrons.
Man up folks, accept the apology, enjoy the chuckle at someone else's misfortune and hope that YOUR tech never bites YOU in the butt at an inopportune moment. Or that if it does, folks aren't as rude to YOU as they are being to this man.
Orion
LordSomber:
Because in today's world people are likely to blow up his house or car, or his family, or burn down his businesses because his cell phone went off causing a minor interruption in a concert.
Orion
Perhaps it's a function of how much time I have been spending in Mexico, but initially I thought this posting was about a new kind of tequila.
" It's kind of inconvenient to have to take one's gloves off, but there are obvious benefits to "flesh only"--no butt dialing, for instance."
I bought my husband winter gloves with touch-screen buttons on the finger tips.
Anyhow, about the other... it's easy for someone who's into the tech to think that anyone can figure out their phone. That's not me. I can easily see stumbling though the set-up and actually setting and turning on the alarm without realizing that's what you did. Figuring out how to silence my phone was a triumph. My husband asks me to answer his phone and I can't, so I can see trying to get an alarm turned off and not getting it right. I can't *see* the phone in some sorts of light, or read the instructions because I only need glasses for reading so I don't wear them if I'm not. And then you get it all set up the way you want and don't change anything for months, so why remember where the settings are kept?
As for apologizing anonymously... absolutely. People like to find someone they feel that they can legitimately hate or even harass. It's like Christmas.
I've had a Blackberry for four years. I just got a new one and it took a good two weeks to figure out how to use it - that is how much it had changed.
As for the alarm, if you do "turn off" the phone will turn itself on and sound the alarm. You have to do a "full power off" in order to avoid the alarm going off, something I didn't find out until the first time it happened.
What's worse, my new Blackberry's default alarm was completely crazy - it starts and keeps getting louder and louder until it sounds like code red at a nuclear facility. My alarm time transferred over, but not my former little chirp that was for my ears only.
Lucky I wasn't at any meetings the day after I got it, or I'd be in the soup myself.
(And I can't turn mine totally off because I have a child who is severely disabled, and I never know when I will have to dash home or to school or, god forbid, the emergency room.)
Re: live vs. recorded music. Both have their virtues. As a (lapsed) trombonist, I can relate to the challenge imposed by the concert situation - you have the one shot to play as you should, in "concert" with hundreds of others. If you succeed, as an individual, but especially as a group, you have achieved something great and important.
A knowledgeable audience that bears witness to such an event has experienced something very special. It is rare, but what good in life isn't?
It's not about classical music, or a high-priced ticket, or even a knowledgeable and appreciative audience. (Though that's nice.)
Any decent piece of music, played live by a decent musician to a reasonably pleasant audience, is bound to be a lot more interesting than a decent recording of the same piece by the same musician.
I like recordings fine, and I like being able to hear the best musicians without paying the earth. I appreciate the art that goes into tweaking a live or studio recording.
But live music is a living moment of creation, with the audience giving back a little something. Even the best tweaked recording is just a nice re-creation of it. And I say this both as someone who's been a performer and an audience member.
http://youtu.be/uub0z8wJfhU
It's relevant, trust me...
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